Legally Blonde at least paid well-glossed lip service to the idea that intelligence can set you free. But stupidity and banality reign supreme in Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde, the sequel to the 2001 smash about a Bel-Air blonde who found her brain at Harvard Law School.
Not since Rocky II has there been a more blatant attempt to recapitulate a box-office hit without adding any new attraction or appeal.
In the first film, pink-clad goddess Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) got in touch with her gray matter and bested a bunch of Ivy League smarty-pants and smarter-skirts. Here she gets to go through the same pastel odyssey, this time on Capitol Hill. Of course, to make this agenda work, Elle must appear to forget everything she learned two years ago.
Hordes of adolescents have embraced Elle as an achiever who also enjoys being a girl. But die-hard fans in particular may find themselves brought up short. After all, in today's home-video era, there's no longer any convenient, collective amnesia following a movie's first release; fans spin their favorite DVDs as often as they do their prize CDs. To accept that the same Woods who shrewdly cracks a murder case at the end of the first movie would, at the start of the second one, cheerily threaten action against one of her high-powered Boston firm's own clients requires more than amnesia - maybe mass lobotomy.
You see, in preparation for her impending Fenway Park (yes, Fenway Park) nuptials to Harvard Law instructor Emmett Richmond (Luke Wilson), Elle has striven to find the mother of her beloved Chihuahua, Bruiser (Moondoggie). Elle locates her, unfortunately, in a test lab for a cosmetics company whose initials form the name of her favorite clothier, V.E.R.S.A.C.E. With the feckless confidence of a MENSA-grade ditz, she proudly announces to her firm's partners that she intends to free lab animals. Sure enough, she's fired. So Ms. Woods goes to Washington to join the staff of congresswoman Victoria Rudd (Sally Field) and push for protective legislation. (Yes, we do get to see Emmett and Elle watch a scene from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.)
